


No one closer to you in the world

by mcicioni



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 22:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcicioni/pseuds/mcicioni
Summary: Fifteen drabbles (100 words each, including a few multiple drabbles of 200, 300 or 400 words). Not sequential. Written for the Silverflint 2018 Drabble of the Week Challenge (18 weekly three-word prompts).Silver and Flint in different places, with different references, but always with issues of trust and communication.





	1. Past, Honesty, Travel

“I told you more times than I can remember. My past is dead. Buried. Stop asking.”

“I’ll keep asking until you trust me enough to give me your past. Where you travelled, what you saw, whom you met. Who you lied to. Who you were close to. What made you what you were on the day we met. What made you leave me in Savannah, and then find me again here.”

“Why the fuck do you …?”

“Because now we can afford to be honest with each other. Because now we can talk of the future as well as the past.”


	2. Owl, Horizon, Scream

It’s almost night. They are progressing slowly, cautiously. The beach, and their wrecked ship, are behind them. The horizon is a tangle of unfamiliar trees.

Tree branches sway above them. An owl? A crewman looks up and screams, “A bear! Watch out!” 

Silver grins. “A small one, you fool. The books say that they live in trees, eat leaves and aren’t dangerous.” 

“Keep moving,” Flint orders. His hand rests on Silver’s shoulder as he whispers, “The books also mention deadly spiders and snakes.”

Silver flashes him a smile. “You and I together can defeat all the fauna on Terra Australis.”


	3. Villain, Water, Book

Silver is sitting on a sand dune, an open book on his lap. He’s not reading, just staring at the water. 

Flint walks up to him. Silver raises his eyes towards him – puzzled, amused, and very blue.

“Complicated man, this Odysseus.”

Flint sits down beside him. “Why?”

“He’s the hero of the story. But nearly everyone who gets close to him in his journey ends up unhappy or dead.”

Flint knows. All too well. As he knows that they are not only discussing the book. “You see him as the villain,” he says with a small sigh.

“Not quite.” A corner of Silver’s mouth lifts slightly. He closes the book and puts it down on the sand. “He’s a survivor because he adapts to new situations. And becomes a leader because he has a solution to every problem and can persuade his men to do what he says. A hard man not to like.”

Who _is_ Silver talking about now? The book lies between them, closed, ambiguous.

“Worth following, then,” Flint says softly, his fingers brushing the leather cover.

“Worth keeping close. As a friend, not an enemy,” Silver corrects just as softly, his fingers covering Flint’s, folding around them.


	4. Rabbit, Story, Pistol

“Let me.” Silver’s arm lifts swiftly, the pistol fires, and fifteen yards away the rabbit drops.

Flint looks him over. “Where’d you learn to shoot?”

Silver looks wistfully into the distance. “In Provence. I was a stable boy at the castle of the Comte de la Fère. He taught me to shoot, to ride and to play the flute. He had just started teaching me to fence when he fought his last duel.”

Flint strokes his beard. “Good story,” he says, with a nod of approval.

“I think so too, Captain,” Silver laughs, striding off to pick up the rabbit.


	5. Trust, Energy, Mother

“What the fuck are _these_? Aren’t we having a fencing lesson?”

“It’s something that can be done on one leg and a crutch. And needs less energy than swordfighting. Trust me.”

“You sound like a mother hen trying to keep her chick safe.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Pick up the bow.”

“What’s the target?”

“The coconut on that rock.”

“Too far. Fucking impossible. End of lesson.”

“Wait … I’ll throw in a bribe.”

“I’m incorruptible…. Oh. _That_ kind of bribe. Do that again. Please.”

"After you hit the coconut.”

“You shit. Well, how do I fit the arrow onto the bow?”


	6. Pirate, Grace, Fire

Silver believes that he read the signs correctly. And that now, partnership re-established and bellies full of raw shark, he can speak.

He knocks, enters, closes the door, and says, “There’s something else I need to tell you. I’m attracted to you.”

Flint looks impassive. Maybe he’s trying to observe the social graces he learned before he became a pirate. Maybe he’s shy.

Or maybe Silver read the signs wrong. Then he’s a dead man.

Flint sets his shoulders, just like he does before he orders, “Fire.” And then he blinks a couple of times, sighs, and says quietly, “Same here.”


	7. Love, Tease, Haunted

I am back on this island. Where you saved our lives, with a little encouragement from me. Where we – you, me, and a bottle of rum – buried the treasure. Where I learned how to fight and not die.

I also think of Nassau. That night at the Wrecks. And the teasing looks we exchanged while we were roasting that pig.

I thought that memories would haunt me. They don’t. Because you’re alive. And so is Madi.

My life will go on without you. In the certainty that what there was between us – unacknowledged, unspoken, uneasy as it was – was love.


	8. Revolution, Mask, Dance

The dead man’s feet are dancing wildly in the wind. As is the sign REBEL on a cord around his neck.

The two old men look at each other. Each knows that the other is thinking of when, many years ago, the sign on the chest of a hanged man said PIRATE.

Silver’s shoulder brushes Flint’s. “One day there _will_ be a successful war against England. A revolution.”

Flint’s face is an impassive mask. “Maybe.” He heaves a long sigh. “Neither of us will be around to see it.” He lays a weary hand on Silver’s shoulder. “Let’s go home.”


	9. Blade, Record, Rock

Silver watches in disbelief as Flint gets up from the rock, slides the knife into his belt and dives into the ocean. For a moment Silver notes, pointlessly, how broad Flint’s shoulders are and how his wet breeches stick to his round, firm backside. Then he wonders, just as pointlessly, if Flint’s shoulder wound will reopen and if Flint will get additional wounds from the knife blade as he swims.

Silver can’t walk to St. Augustine. He can’t rejoin the Walrus crew. He can’t give himself up to the Spanish soldiers. There are no other options whatsoever.

If ever in the future, god forbid, anyone should write about their (probably short) lives and (probably awful) deaths, Silver hopes that Flint will be on record as an utter madman, and himself as the unheeded voice of reason. The pattern is apparent. Gates. Singleton. The shipwreck. The warship, in the unlikely event they manage to take it. Wherever else the madman will decide to head next. 

He will never be free from Flint.

The implications of this last thought are too complicated to examine right now. He takes his boots off, throws his jacket on the sand, and steps into the waves.


	10. Moonlight, Map, Paint

Flint is standing by his desk, hands clasped behind his back, glaring down at a map.

Silver gazes at him. Someone should paint him like this, the image of the loneliness of command. But Flint would throw overboard anyone who ever asked him to pose.

“Come up on the bridge,” he says. “Please.”

“Why?”

“A bit of quiet and rest in the moonlight would do you good. Captain.”

Flint stares at him, then his eyes soften. “Very well.” He looks Silver over. “Remember, you said quiet.” His hand rests briefly, light and warm, on Silver’s neck as they step out.


	11. Wine, Paper, Lock

Silver closes the door, pours himself a cup of wine and stares at Madi’s handwriting on the envelope. How she traced him, and what she needs to tell him, is anyone’s guess.

He breaks the seal. Two sheets of paper. One is from Madi, just a few succinct words. The other – Silver recognises the handwriting and freezes. He has a long drink, then another.

He takes a deep breath and unfolds the letter. He frowns, sighs, smiles, frowns again. Then he pockets the letter, finds a key, unlocks the wardrobe, grabs his pack and starts shoving his clothes into it.


	12. Snow, Gun, Remorse

For years he thought that if he saw Silver again he would kill him. 

And now he does not want to reach for a gun, or a knife, or a sword. 

“I don’t feel any remorse,” Silver says. “And I know what I destroyed. Both are true. Two points in space at the same time.”

Something inside Flint starts to melt, like snow at the beginning of a thaw. “And?” 

“Once you called me _the last of a line of ill-fated partners_. That’s what I want to be. Your last partner. Not ill-fated.” 

They look at each other in silence. 


	13. Tactile, Impulse, Heavy

He tries to move around the cabin, every step torture, the heavy metal foot wrenching his raw flesh. 

He stumbles and holds on to Flint’s desk. Under his shaking hands the wood is solid, tactile reassurance.

He sees the book and crushes the impulse to re-read the inscription. It would be pointless to reopen that other wound. He knows, he has known for thirty years, that he’ll never be anyone’s truest love. 

He closes his eyes, pain pounding his body and his spirit. He doesn’t hear the door open or see the concern, annoyance and desire evident on Flint’s face. 


	14. Contempt, Pray, Glass

As a small boy, Silver prayed for his mother to come back to him. She didn’t, and he stopped praying.

As a young man, he hoped for love. Then he realised that in order to be loved one needs to give the other person something they value. So he settled for being _a hard man not to like_. 

He takes a long swig from the bottle of rum; you don’t need a glass when you’re sitting on a cliff at the top of a hill. Now, he is both liked and feared. Now he’s the reason grown men lie awake at night, he’s the new beginning for Nassau. Yet he’s not enough for Madi: she isn’t, as she put it, a no-good pirate, and all he can offer her is love and respect. 

And what could he give another no-good pirate, other than honesty, some of the time, and love, most of the time? He takes another, longer swallow. Flint will be here soon, and he’d better be his determined self, ready to hear whatever new insane plan Flint wants to reveal.

“You don’t need this.” Flint is behind him, stretching his hand out for the bottle. In his voice and face there is authority, but no contempt; there is also something that, in anyone else, Silver would call tenderness. Under his other arm he is carrying two cutlasses and a wooden crutch.

Flint bends to put the bottle down on the sand. With his back to Silver, he asks, “What was that all about?”

Silver could easily obfuscate, invent, lie. But pride can’t be an issue between them, they’re past it now.

“I was thinking about what one can do to deserve love.”

Flint turns and frowns at him. “Deserve? Love has nothing to do with deserving.” Silver half-expects some quotation from Marcus Aurelius and is relieved when it’s not forthcoming. Flint is looking down at him, eyes narrowed. “Love is … a connection. Looking at the other person and _seeing_ them.” He pauses, reflects for a moment. “Love is … opening doors.” He stops again, squares his shoulders, and says, “One night, in a cage. And before that, one morning, in a longboat.”

Silver blinks, swallows twice in quick succession, breathes out, grins up at Flint and starts unstrapping his metal leg. “Right. Teach me how not to die.”

Flint smiles, a door flung open, light flooding in. “Shall we?”


	15. Celebrate, Dream, Melody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set somewhere between 2.03 and 2.08.

Flint is drinking alone in Eleanor’s tavern when he hears shouting and clapping in the distance, mixed with a strange melody, a slow tempo that grows faster and slows down again. He gets up, follows the melody into a small square, and stops dead in his tracks.

A dozen or so men – sailors from a Greek ship that landed yesterday – are dancing in a line, arms linked at shoulder height, stepping left and right in time with the music produced by three men with an accordion, a tambourine, and a kind of long-necked guitar. And near the end of the line there’s Silver, hopping on one foot and lightly kicking into the air with the other, bending, rising, laughing with the men on either side of him.

Flint joins some of his crewmen who are clapping in time with the tune, half-closes his eyes and allows himself to daydream a little. Of somehow ending his war with England and returning to Europe. Maybe to a small Greek island, where he could fish, and Miranda could grow vegetables, and Silver could …

Silver??

He blinks twice. The man who wormed his way into his daydreams is still skipping, forwards, backwards, faster and faster. He spots Flint, breaks away from the line and goes to stand in front of him.

“It’s a men’s dance. It’s called _hasapiko_. They’re celebrating their safe arrival.”

Flint grunts noncommittally. And a small mischievous gleam lights up Silver’s eyes. 

“Captain. The steps are easy. May I have the honour …?” And without giving Flint time to tell him to fuck off, Silver is drawing him into the line and laying an arm across his shoulders.

The steps are not hard, and the heat from Silver’s body is as exhilarating as the music. Flint throws back his head and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks to darcyone, who patiently proofread one of these a week.


End file.
